Sharon Kay Herbaugh (January 28, 1954 – April 16, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent for the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
. She was the Associated Press bureau chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, at the time of her death. Herbaugh was killed while on an assignment when she was traveling with 14 other people, including freelance journalist Natasha Singh and translator Mohammad Rafie, and their helicopter crashed into the side of a mountain near Pul-e Khomri, north of Kabul. Aid workers recovered the bodies from a ravine hours after the crash. The accident cause was later deemed engine failure. Herbaugh was the AP's first female bureau chief to be killed while on assignment for the Associated Press. She remained the AP's only female journalist to be killed in the line of duty until the 2014 death of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus, who was shot and killed while covering the presidential elections in Afghanistan.
Early life
Herbaugh was born in
Lamar, Colorado
Lamar is the home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Prowers County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,804 at the 2010 United States Census. The city was named after Confederate ...
, and lived here until attending college at
Baylor University
Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the ...
in Waco, Texas, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in journalism and served as an editor of ''
the Baylor Lariat
''The Baylor Lariat'' is the student newspaper of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, the Houston Press Club named it the best student newspaper in the state of Texas.
History
''The Baylor Lariat'' was offi ...
''. She was a trained pianist.
Career
She started working at the Associated Press in 1978 as a vacation relief staffer in Denver, Colorado. She was moved to bureaus in Dallas, Houston and the International Desk in New York City before taking her first foreign posting in 1988 as news editor in New Delhi, India. In 1990, she was promoted to the bureau chief role in Islamabad, Pakistan. Herbaugh covered big stories of the subcontinent, including the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country's subsequent civil was and rising insurgencies from the Taliban and Mujahideen. Herbaugh's last story was on Afghanistan's war-scarred capital. At the time of her death, she was reporting a story on landmine removals facilitated by the non-governmental organization
HALO Trust
The HALO Trust (Hazardous Area Life-support Organization) is a non-political and non-religious registered British charity and American non-profit organization which removes debris left behind by war, in particular land mines. With over 10,000 staf ...